I agree with elroacho about TWD. Not all of life is adventure, and not every danger is a zombie trying to eat your face. TWD does a decent job of showing how hectic, boring, slow, fast, scary, depressing, and awesome a post-apocolyptic world could be. The dynamics within the group and their efforts to rebuild society are, for me at least, easily as if not far more interesting than the "zombie problem". To me the zombies simply set the parameters of the new world, kind of like the cold war, and the real story is how the people adapt and deal with the new rules. It is character-based more than I think people give it credit for, as really is all good fiction, be it in print or film. If you don't have characters you can care about the story matters little, imo.
But to me Breaking Bad was the better show all the way around. It is very hard to compare the 2, but I think overall, in nearly every way, Breaking Bad was better: better writing, acting, story-lines, and more importantly the underlying story, which is fully necessary to keep the other "story-lines" moving and relevant as time passes, as well as how the series was wrapped up as a complete filled-out final "work", so to speak. It was a fascinating case-study in how our choices lead us to different paths, and whole new sets of choices, and how a decent man can allow pride and a series of choices and justifications to draw him down a path he would undoubtedly not have chosen for himself from the outset. To me this is reflected in all of our lives to some degree, and that is why it resonated with me. Who hasn't made choices they regretted, or wondered at times "how did I get here, right here, right now?"
But as elroacho mentioned, every story will be taken by some people differently than others and have a deeper impact on some than others and to me that is what makes fiction great. The meaning changes as the reader/listener/viewer filters the information and the story is therefore the same, and different, for everyone.
Cool stuff.
